The present invention relates generally to the tracking of dig location tickets for the protection of underground utilities. Dig location tickets are created as a result of an excavator contacting an underground utility maintenance organization before conducting an excavation that may potentially harm the underground plant. More particularly, the present invention is a method of finding a specific dig location ticket in a large database of such tickets, using geographic data in a unique user interface.
Communications and utility companies (xe2x80x9ccarriersxe2x80x9d) often own or maintain vast underground plants, including communications cables, power service cables, water pipes, gas pipes, sewers and other utilities. The carriers responsible for those underground plants actively encourage anyone digging in the ground to first notify the companies of the planned excavation. Organizations, often called xe2x80x9cOne-Callxe2x80x9d centers, have been created to centrally receive such calls and to notify all potentially involved carriers of the planned dig. A carrier representative is often sent to the dig site in order to xe2x80x9cstake outxe2x80x9d the actual location of the underground plant, so excavators may avoid it.
As the notifications are received, xe2x80x9cdig location ticketsxe2x80x9d are created for tracking the status of each notification as it is handled by a carrier company. The xe2x80x9cticketxe2x80x9d is typically a record in a database containing information such as an identification of the caller, a date the notification was received, a planned excavation date and a location of the excavation. Because the initial notification may come from a variety of sources (for example, road or building construction companies, utilities, landscapers, farmers and individuals planning to dig in the yard), information about the location of the dig may be received in a variety of forms. For example, the information may be a simple description of the dig being xe2x80x9cnearxe2x80x9d a landmark such as a building, it may be an address, or the information may be in the form of precise coordinates of the dig. When a dig location ticket is created, whatever location information is received is converted to map coordinates that best represent the described dig site, given the data received from the caller. The converted coordinates may, for example, be latitude/longitude or UTM (Universal Transverse Mercator) coordinates.
The locations of components of the buried plant are known to the responsible utility companies. For example, a company responsible for a fiber optic cable system maintains a database of buffer zones surrounding buried cables in the system. When a location of a proposed excavation falls within a buffer zone, it is carefully reviewed and any necessary actions are taken to avoid harming the underground plant.
While the present invention may be used in connection with protecting any type of underground plant, it will be described herein in connection with the protection of an underground cable system such as a fiber optic system. A large corporation such as ATandT will may receive 15,000 to 20,000 dig location tickets on an average day from 50 different One-Call Centers throughout the United States. Some of those tickets are closed automatically by the system if the dig location is not within a cable buffer zone. In other cases, technicians receive the appropriate dig location tickets for which they are responsible, and work on those tickets to protect the cables. For example, the technician may be present during the excavation, or may mark the area to show where the underground cable is buried.
Sometimes, however, a cable cut happens for various reasons. In one example, an excavator may have failed to inform the One-Call Center about the planned excavation. In that case, the cable company does not receive notification and would not have created a dig location ticket. In another example, a technician may not have been able to be present at the dig location because there was insufficient notice of the dig alert, or because the excavator dug earlier than the date contained in the dig location ticket. In yet another example, the excavator may have dug in a location other than that described in the dig location ticket.
In any event, if damage to an underground plant such as a cable cut occurs, operators in the utility""s network maintenance center must find the dig location ticket, if any, that was issued for the particular excavation that caused the damage. The ticket is necessary to quickly identify the excavator and to determine when the ticket was received by the system, what the dig location coordinates were, etc. That is necessary in order to prevent further damage by the excavator, to quickly detect problems in the One-Call system, and, if necessary, to seek compensation from the excavator. It is presently very difficult to search the system for the appropriate ticket, inasmuch as the database contains several millions of tickets. To compound the problem, it is often the case that the network maintenance center operator knows very few details about the ticket.
In addition to damage to the underground plant, other circumstances may necessitate searching a dig location database by network maintenance center operators. For example, a center may have a need to locate active tickets in a certain area for purposes of allocating technician workloads.
There is therefore presently a need to enable network maintenance operators to quickly and efficiently identify a dig location ticket in a database of millions of such tickets, given the types of information typically available to the operators. To the inventors"" knowledge, there is currently no system capable of such searches.
The present invention addresses the needs described above by providing a method for identifying a specific dig location ticket in a large database. The database includes dig location tickets containing geographic coordinates of dig locations and date information. The method comprises the steps of receiving from a user a date range selection and an identification of a geographic region, retrieving from the database a set of dig location tickets containing a date falling within the date range and geographic coordinates falling within the region, presenting to the user a map showing the identified region and indicators representing geographic coordinates of the retrieved tickets, and receiving from the user a selection of the specific dig location ticket.
The method may also include the step of presenting on the map a representation of an underground plant buffer zone. The step of receiving an identification of a region may include presenting to the user a map and receiving from the user at least two points on the map representing the region.
The step of receiving an identification of a region may include presenting to the user an overview map, receiving from the user at least one point on the map representing an area containing the region, and zooming the map to that area.
The indicators representing geographic coordinates of the retrieved tickets may be representations of pushpins. The indicators may have a characteristic representing non-coordinate data in corresponding tickets. That characteristic may be a color of the indicator. That non-coordinate data may be a level of involvement with an underground plant.
The method may further comprise the step of presenting to the user data contained in the specific dig location ticket. The method may also include the step of presenting to the user a tabular list of tickets having geographical coordinates within the region.
In another embodiment of the invention, a machine readable medium is provided containing configuration instructions for performing the above-described method for identifying a specific dig location ticket in a database of dig location tickets.
In yet another embodiment, a system is provided for identifying a specific dig location ticket in a database of dig location tickets containing geographic coordinates of dig locations and date information. The system includes a processor and memory containing instructions for performing the method described above.
Another embodiment of the invention is a method for identifying a specific record in a database of records. The records in the database contain geographic coordinates. The method comprising the steps of receiving from a user a coordinate range defining a geographic region, retrieving from the database a plurality of records, each record of the plurality of records containing geographic coordinates falling within the region, presenting to the user a map showing the defined region and showing indicators representing geographic coordinates of the retrieved records, and receiving from the user a selection of the specific record.